Microcredit interest costs remain higher than those of commercial banks in spite of significant donor funds, largely owing to transaction costs relative to small loan sizes. With the rise of Web 2.0 and online social interactivity, can these transaction costs be reduced through peer to peer...

A national survey of firms that participated in outsourcing relationships was conducted, and service quality and relationship quality were found to be significantly and positively related to each other and both had a significant impact on user satisfaction. However, the intricacies of the causal...

In the field of global rule-setting for responsible business behaviour, multi-stakeholder standards have emerged in recent years because of their potential for effective consensus-building, knowledge-sharing and interest representation. Proponents also hold that multi-stakeholder standards could...

The purpose of this study is to assess the proposition that adoption of a market orientation leads to improved service quality for service sector organisations. We argue that an organisational culture incorporating customer care as its central tenet and involving efforts to understand the needs...

This chapter provides a comprehensive overview of business process outsourcing (BPO) strategies and analyzes related issues. The discussions in this chapter can serve as an aid to decision makers who face the great dilemma of whether to insource or outsource a process, and additionally how to...

Many terminologies have grown out of the outsourcing and offshoring bandwagon. While the corporate world continues to experience these phenomena, the academic world continues to research the same. An attempt has been made to give an overview of the various alternatives in sourcing maze. We first...

If we consider corporate defense as representing an organization's program of self-defense, we are referring to the structures, measures, mechanisms and processes aimed at defending the interests of all of its stakeholders (including its people). Managing corporate defense is therefore an...

One of the most significant challenges facing family businesses, and therefore the most studied, is how to successfully manage succession from one generation to the next. The purpose of this article is to allow the vast quantity of evidence and experience to be contextualised, and enable a...

We examine whether impact investing is more effective in fostering business venture success and social impact when investments are directed toward ventures located in disadvantaged urban areas (that is, areas with high crime, unemployment, and poverty) compared to similar investments directed...

In an RCT, a large retail chain’s CEO sets new goals for the managers of the treated stores by asking them “to do what they can” to reduce the employee quit rate. The treatment decreases the quit rate by a fifth to a quarter, lasting nine months before petering out, but reappearing after a...